"Blanchot romantique," Maison Française d’Oxford, April 20-21, 2009.

Keynote speakers: Christophe Bident, Leslie Hill, Michael Holland. Marking the first major event on Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003) to take place in the UK in the past fifteen years, this conference will bring together some of the most eminent scholars in the field, as well as a number of postgraduates both from the UK and abroad, to address the ways in which Blanchot’s work engages with the Romantic legacy and to explore how this engagement continues to inform contemporary debates on literature, philosophy, and politics. The aim of ‘Blanchot romantique’ is at least twofold: (1) to broaden our understanding of the singular place that Romanticism holds in Blanchot’s writings, and (2) to give a major assessment of his contribution to thinking aesthetics in the wake of Romanticism. At decisive moments in his work, Blanchot engages with a variety of key Romantic notions, including subjectivity and experience, inspiration and imagination, irony and the sublime, the fragment and the total work, violence and revolution. Romanticism thus provides us with a crucial set of concepts to approach the literary, philosophical and political challenge that Blanchot’s writing represents. From a literary perspective, Blanchot offers decisive readings of a number of figures associated with Romanticism and post-Romanticism, both in the French and German traditions (among others, Goethe, Jean-Paul, Hölderlin, Rilke, Sade, Lautréamont, Nerval, Baudelaire, Mallarmé). These readings inform not only his criticism but also his own practice as a writer. From a philosophical and/or theoretical perspective, his thought engages with a number of key eighteenth- and nineteenth-century thinkers (Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Nietzsche), as well as with the leading figures behind the Athenaeum (Novalis, the Schlegels), whose legacies are associated, directly or indirectly, with Romantic thought. The twentieth century continued to reflect upon the question of Romanticism, in particular at the intersection between literature, philosophy, and theory. In this light, the conference will examine Blanchot comparatively with other key critical interlocutors of the twentieth century such as Martin Heidegger, Albert Béguin, Walter Benjamin, Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, and Jean-Luc Nancy. Finally, from a political viewpoint, Blanchot’s work opens new perspectives on Romantic and post-Romantic questions of revolution, violence, history, commitment, and community. His interpretation of the French Revolution and of the May ’68 events are crucial in this regard. PRELIMINARY PROGRAMME: ROMANTIC LEGACIES (I): THEORY Christophe Bident, Université de Paris-Diderot – Paris VII ‘Le neutre est-il une notion romantique?’ Yves Gilonne, University of Nottingham ‘L’auto-réflexivité du Sublime’ Maebh Long, University of Durham ‘A Step Askew: Ironic Parabasis in Blanchot’ Gisèle Berkman, Collège International de Philosophie, Paris ‘Blanchot et le Romantisme allemand: poétique, théorie, pratique’ ROMANTIC LEGACIES (II): PRAXIS Michael Holland, St. Hugh’s College, Oxford ‘Blanchot and Jean-Paul’ Jérémie Majorel, Université de Paris-Diderot – Paris VII ‘Blanchot, narrateur de Mallarmé’ ROMANTIC CONVERSATIONS IN THE 20th CENTURY Jake Wadham, St. Edmund Hall, Oxford ‘Blanchot, Benjamin, and the Absence of the Work’ Hector Kollias, King’s College London ‘Unworking Irony’s Work: Blanchot and de Man as readers of the Athenaeum’ Ian Maclachlan, Merton College, Oxford ‘Blanchot, Derrida, and the Romantic Imagination’ ROMANTIC FRAGMENTATIONS Leslie Hill, University of Warwick ‘Blanchot and Translation’ Patrick ffrench, King’s College London ‘The Fragment, the Disaster, and Melancholy’ POLITICAL ROMANTICISM Ian James, Downing College, Cambridge ‘Naming the Nothing: Nancy and Blanchot on Community’ Martin Crowley, Queens’ College, Cambridge ‘Even now, now, very now’ Parham Shahrjerdi, Université de Paris-Diderot – Paris VII ‘Terreur et révolution’ For further information, contact: John McKeane: john.mckeane@st-annes.ox.ac.uk Hannes Opelz: hdo20@cam.ac.uk (Via http://www.continental-philosophy.org/.)